2004 Mazda RX-8

Round and round with one stiff drinker.

TONY SWANWhoever matched this black-and-brown Doberman color scheme to the metallic red exterior should be flayed.

PATTI MAKIWhy the "holey" sun visors? Stupid. Defeats the purpose.

PAT BEDARDSports car or convection oven? I haven't felt A/C this weak since the Honda Accord of the late '80s.

ROBIN WARNERFor the money I would park this in my garage over a 350Z any day.

BEN MOERMANThe nav system worked flawlessly and even took me on routes around heavy traffic, and it never missed a destination. However, its female voice should take some lessons from the Jaguar wing of Ford. It needs to sound sexier.

BARRY WINFIELDL.A. to Phoenix, all freeway, and this thing is getting only 19 mpg. It's a six-speed, for Pete's sake! So there is a reason no other car company has developed a rotary.

RON KIINOIt's a stellar gearbox. Very effortless and smooth. Still feels brand-new after almost 35,000 miles. It's a beautifully balanced machine that is so composed on twisty roads.

Our long-term 2004 Mazda RX-8 traveled exactly 451 miles before the first thing went kablooey. Distant cheering could be heard from the Lincoln-Mercury, Volvo, and Mazda dealer across town.

In 1993 we clunked, bobbled, and short-circuited our way through a 35,000-mile test of a Mazda RX-7. Our cost was zero for correcting a host of vexations, from an expired CD player to leaky shocks to an addled engine computer. But the RX-7's warranty had paid months of mortgages for the nincompoops at the dealership. Mazda purged the ravishing but infirm RX-7 from its U.S. catalog in 1995. Lovers of Herr Wankel's spinning rotors faced eight years of celibacy.

Mazda tried again with the RX-8, launched in 2003. A redesigned body bubbles rearward with two extra rear-hinged doors and four seats, riding on a new, flex-free sport chassis with power from a new, cleaner rotary engine. Presumably, there are new faces in our dealer's service department as well, so if ever a car were ripe for a long-term test, this one is it. Gentlemen, start your scan tools.

Our Velocity Red RX-8 arrived in the last days of a snow-blown January bearing a $2000 navigation system and a $4000 Grand Touring package that includes a sunroof, heated seats trimmed with rubberized side bolsters and Frappuccino-colored leather, an eight-way power driver's seat, skid control, and a Bose stereo. The sticker read $33,200. We sent the car straight in for a $1307 set of Pirelli Winter 210 Snowsport tires and Kazera KZ-V 7.0-by-17-inch alloy wheels. Traction, nonexistent before, resumed on the RX-8's return.

But not before the check-engine lantern came on at mile 451. The technician's scan tool turned up "P0420," an industry-standard trouble code indicating declining performance in the catalytic converter. The tech "reflashed" the engine computer-a modern way of saying he rapped it with a wrench, perhaps?-and sent us on our way. We hadn't heard the last of Mr. P0420.

Meanwhile, the RX-8 convinced us that it's a hole-seeking missile in traffic and the perfect car for people who think the Lotus Elise should come as a station wagon. Those three kinks in the avenue between the library and the rail crossing, the one where cops have no place to hide, became the Maison Blanche curves at Le Mans. Mazda actually won Le Mans, you know, in 1991.

The RX-8 plants four feet in a wide, stable stance and charges, its twin rotors gyrating to 9000 rpm with a Hoover vacuum's patented exhaust rip. Relatively featherweight, always agile, and remarkably stiff with finger-flick steering, the RX-8 is constantly hunting for the next apex.

We admired the boom-box cabin detailing and particularly its decorative trochoids. These curve-sided triangles honor the two rotors that make the engine special. Two big silver ones are pressed into the front headrests, one into the center of each bumper. The stubby shifter even has the shape, sliding through its narrow, closely spaced gates with light pressure and a gratifying mechanical linkage.

At 5026 miles, the check-engine light flashed on. Again, P0420 was lurking in the wires, and again, the technician performed a "software download," which extinguished the light. Perhaps he installed Windows XP. The trouble light was shining again even before the car left the shop, and this time, P0420, our canary in the tailpipe, had up and died. The dealership replaced the faulty catalytic converter, spending a boggling $1145 of Mazda's money. Not surprisingly, RX-8 chat rooms have been abuzz with P0420 discussions. Mazda says a cold-start problem with early RX-8s stuffed up the cats; it's been fixed.

The dealer also conducted recall 1604B, a fix to the passenger-airbag wiring, and recall 1704B, replacing a heat-insulator bracket that could crack and fall off. For our trouble, they graciously threw in an unscheduled oil change and sent the $30 bill to Mazda.

Speaking of 5W-20, the Mazda went blotto on the stuff. All rotaries supply oil to the combustion chambers to lubricate the rotor seals. The RX-8's new Renesis rotary has a computer-controlled injection pump that is supposed to meter out about one quart every 10,000 miles. For some reason our RX-8 guzzled one quart an average of every 3600 miles, demanding a total of 11 extra quarts and drinking its sump dry enough to flash the ominous low-oil warning on no fewer than five occasions.

Although the owner's manual doesn't mention oil consumption and offers no advice on the subject, we started allocating space in the meager trunk for spare oil jugs and checking in with the dipstick regularly. That oft-used dipstick resides beneath a tangle of hot, dirty hoses and the equally oft-used oil-filler pipe underneath the engine's plastic acoustic cover. As one editor noted, better locations might have been found for a car with a "check oil often" imperative.

Spring turned to summer, and the RX-8 went back to the farrier for its original Bridgestone Potenza RE040 warm-weather rubber. The first of several trips across America sent it to Arizona, where editor-at-large Bedard subjected it to a rigorous triple-digit sunshine test and found it wanting.

"The perforated sun visors," he wrote in a moment of aggravated eloquence, "are as clever as a perforated boat."

Items left in the RX-8 throughout the day could deform into Dali-esque shapes. The mostly black cabin strained the air-conditioning system. Even in full-freeze mode with the fan roaring and the vent set to recirc, it couldn't keep up. At 12,237 miles, Mazda repossessed the car and dropped it off at the local dealer with instructions to install an "A/C amplifier." Reserved for "people who complain," reports Bedard, the amplifier is a black-box change that bumps up the duty cycle of the compressor and condenser fan. The fix transformed the A/C's performance, although it meant that the cooling fans often whooshed long after the car was parked, blowing gusts of hot air at innocent bystanders and weakening the battery.

And ample hot air there was. Averaging just 19 mpg while moving a relatively light 3067-pound curb weight, our RX-8 expelled more gasoline as waste heat than other cars its size. Of course, some of the fuel's energy went to motion, and the RX-8's 238 horsepower and 159 pound-feet of torque gave it initial acceleration times of 6.6 seconds to 60 mph and 15.1 seconds at 93 mph for the quarter.

Racers say rotary engines get faster as they age, the engine's best lap always being the last one. The RX-8 didn't disprove the theory after 40,000 miles, cutting its drag sprints down to 5.9 seconds for 60 mph and 14.6 seconds at 96 mph through the quarter. The braking distance from 70 mph dropped from an excellent 153 feet to an outstanding 145, but that was likely due to the $1095 Yokohama Advan Neova AD07 tires we opted for after the original Bridgestones wore out at 30,000 miles. We got 0.88 g on the skidpad.

None of the RX-8's times touched those of our old 255-hp, 2884-pound twin-turbo RX-7, which put out 5.2-second rushes to 60 mph and 0.93-g skidpad runs. But neither do the RX-8's frustration levels touch the RX-7's. We made nine unscheduled stops in the RX-7 to the RX-8's three. After the converter and A/C fixes, the RX-8 ran flawlessly, with only its oil addiction and scheduled service stops to crack the hood. There were three of the latter, costing $25 to $30. There was one $90 rip-off, and the big 37,500-mile service ran $411 and changed out the filters and spark plugs as well.

We used the motorized-hideaway navigation system to avoid L.A. traffic jams, but the small control knob became increasingly wobbly and imprecise. We savored the giant instrument dials and their red light-saber pointers on a honeymoon drive through New England, while complaints surfaced about the tight-fitting cabin and shortage of passing power. We hauled boxes, luggage, and people in the back seats, but the prominent center console soon showed scars of abuse. The lack of folding seats to extend the trunk also cramped the car's utility. We happily commuted and communed with the RX-8, yet some staffers cited excessive tire and transmission noise, a cruising range of less than 300 miles, and an excessively tricky clutch as reasons to prefer other cars.

In short, we adored the RX-8 when entertaining roads were on the schedule and tolerated its annoyances the rest of the time. And although our RX-8 may be loved by the oil companies, it didn't make as many pals in the service department as its predecessor.